[PLUG] Open source and professional employees

[Geoff Burling]

On Thu, 21 Mar 2002, David Mandel wrote:

>    *  Employment contracts are generally legal, altho they are often
>       difficult to enforce in court.  The particular contract I was
>       asked to sign was poorly worded and had clauses which may have
>       been illegal.  In fact, my superiors argued that I should sign
>       it, because no court would ever enforce such a screwy contract.
>       I didn't buy that argument.

Even if the contract was unenforceable, you'd still have the burden of
having to take it to court, pay fees to a lawyer, & deal with the fact
that the employer could afford to drag it out longer than you could
afford.

If a company believes that it make money from software one of its
employees uses, it WILL try to do so. (And, frankly, I don't blame them
for at least considering it.) I'm sure that a lot of companies look at
Linux's popularity, & wish they had somehow gotten the rights to the
software in order to make money off of it -- & don't understand that
what made it so popular was its freedom from licensing & other
encumbrances.

(I'm sure that Wind River thought they could do that with BSD when they
bought BSDi, only to learn just what would happen, & ended up cutting
their losses in a quick & ungraceful manner.)

Geoff